Mark is Associate Professor of AI, Digital Regulation and Disruptive Technology at the Riga Graduate School of Law. He teaches two courses for master’s students: Digital Regulation, and AI and Disruptive Technologies.
1. Where do you come from?
I am based in Scotland and hold the position of Associate Professor at RGSL. My work sits at the intersection of law, technology and regulation, with a particular focus on artificial intelligence, data protection, consumer protection, deceptive design and emerging technologies.
2. What is the main thing students should take from your courses?
I want students to leave my courses able to think critically about how law should respond to technologies that develop faster than legal institutions. In Digital Regulation and AI and Disruptive Technologies, we move between regulatory theory and practical challenges involving AI governance, platform power, deceptive design, neurotechnology and the growing use of automated systems.
The central lesson is that effective regulation requires more than knowing the rules. Students must understand the theories, institutions and incentives that determine how those rules operate in practice.
3. Who is your authority or role model in your professional field?
I do not have a single professional role model. No scholar, regulator or institution has a perfect message. Read widely, take competing arguments seriously, test them against the evidence and form your own position. Ultimately, you should become your own role model.
4. What is a must-read book in your field?
My own books, of course! Dark Patterns, Deceptive Design, and the Law, Artificial Intelligence, Neurodata, and Society: Law at the Edge of Cognition, and the co-edited collection Critical Perspectives on European Data Protection Law, all published by Hart and Bloomsbury.
Beyond those entirely objective recommendations, Michael Lewis’s The Undoing Project, which explores the work and friendship of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, is an excellent account of how human judgement and decision making actually work. Brian Christian’s The Alignment Problem is also a valuable and accessible examination of the human choices embedded in artificial intelligence.
5. What is one fun thing you want our students to know about you?
Outside academia, I am developing a personalised children’s book about Delilah the dragon, who flies over a town in Scotland and visits the streets, parks and favourite places of my daughter and her friends.
Find out more about RGSL’s Technology Law master’s programme.